User blog:Soulblydd/Decisions about conformity
It seems that there are currently some controversial points regarding standards of wiki-pages. The most severe point for me is the controversy about the item template. Background Story A few days ago I created a spreadsheet for myself in order to bring all pages of certain categories onto one level. I planned to check the various pages and rework them if necessary to fit the style of the majority of pages whenever I had the time and motivation to do that. The first pages I edited with this goal in my mind were some pages about historical Supply Cases. Due to the usage of this template in various other pages such as Black Cap or Black HiSec Key and some of my older edits from Oct. 2012 (Supply Case SPW-III, Supply Case CQB-I, and some more) which were not re-edited to the previous versions, I decided to use the item template to create a consistent appearance of the item box. As I already said the first pages were “historical” Supply Cases, for example the Supply Case G36-N7. (http://combatarms.wikia.com/wiki/Supply_Case_G36-N7?oldid=163889) About 6 hours later ILYx3 re-edited the page to the previous version with the reason “The template is useless. Why put it there?“ I reacted with a message on his wall (http://combatarms.wikia.com/wiki/Thread:64851) explaining my reasons why I added the template and he redirected me to the page Ghillie Suit where he used his desired information box. According to his second sentence “If you want to add a template, at least add something useful.” I decided to add the “|features” variable for every item box to give the template something “useful” without deleting information from the main article just to write them only into the template. This worked fine, (although in the meantime I did not make that much edits) until I chose to edit the Supply Crate MYST-Mark II today. I started by uploading the “Arsenal” image of the Supply Case, (I guess this mobilized ILYx3, am I right? ;-) ) and added a bit more information to the article, such as all sales and ways to obtain this case (at least I believe I’ve found all ways) leading to a bit longer edit session. The result was that ILYx3 submitted his edit with his Infobox a few minutes before I finished my edit with the template. However since I was in hurry I only rushed over his edit to make sure I did not remove any crucial information, after I came to the conclusion that there were no losses of information to be expected, I submitted my edit as well. One hour later, he reverted the page back to his version, this time with the comment “+my template isn't any different from urs, so why remove it?” And here starts the discussion: Problem We have two different types of boxes to compress information, the item template and the Infobox. I prefer to see conformity between pages of the same category instead of a different layout every other page. According to ILYx3 both boxes are not that different, but which one is better? In my opinion it is clear that the weapon pages should keep using the item template since it was created just for this purpose. The question is which template is better for gear, supply cases and premium items. Infobox +''' Flexible towards special content rows. - If there is no source code ready for copy, every row has to be created and named manually. Item '''+ Template particularly created for weapons (items). - Special rows have to be created by users with the permission on the template page. - There is currently no way to leave the category “Guns missing stats” out. What do I want? What I want is a vote about the problem, maybe in a blog, maybe even on the main page. I want to know what the (active) community thinks which one is the better template to provide compressed information about gear, supply cases, premium items and everything else. I personally prefer the item template, but if the community decides to use the Itembox, I am fine with it. Until then, I am going to refrain from edits with an information box. Category:Blog posts